Monthly Archives: November 2013

I have an obsessive personality. I don’t know how to enjoy things halfheartedly. When it comes to losing weight it’s been fantastic. I’m so obsessed with working out, eating protein and counting carbs that I’ve been more successful that I ever imagined. But when it comes to the more trivial and materialistic things in life it can be a bit much. Coffee, tea and WWII memorabilia are things I obsess over. But at the top of my list, makeup. Continue reading →

One of the hardest parts of this whole lifestyle change has been changing my cooking and baking habits. I’m a girl that loves being in the kitchen. Especially when it comes to baking. Being limited in the amount of calories, and knowing that I need to have 70+ grams a protein a day makes me conscious of every little thing that goes in my mouth, and chances are if it’s not a high protein food I skip it. Which means that for the most part, eating the tasty cookies and cupcakes I’ve been baking has been out of the question.

So recently I’ve been playing around with baking with protein powders. Of course these are not “diet” foods. But when I feel like indulging in something sweet, I can feel a little less guilty knowing that they’re packed with protein.

Which brings me to these yummy cookies. They are soooooo good, they are soft, chewy, not too terrible in the carb aspect and have 8 grams of protein each.

I like to keep myself well-informed about the ideologies within the weight loss community and their different sects. I’ve liked to keep myself well-informed long before I made the choice to lose weight. Immersing myself in different articles, blogs and documentaries I’ve always found one recurring theme, people who have lost tremendous amounts of weight claim to have found their long-lost self-esteem. They rave about how they now carry themselves differently, that their perception of who they are has changed completely. I feel the exact opposite, and it makes me wonder, am I the exception to the rule or am I one of the few who is willing to admit that they are more unsure of who they are now than ever before?

Who wouldn’t feel different? 100 pounds is a hell of a lot of weight to lose in 5 months. That’s the size of a baby hippopotamus (seriously, I googled). For every change that I notice physically there are just as many that I’m oblivious too. When I do become aware of a change I become even more concerned with if the change is noticeable to other people, if they approve, and most importantly if I look strange. I know that my close friends must be so frustrated with my interrogations, “Do I look weird?”, “Does my face look like a muppet?”, “Do my legs look too scrawny?”. I was never this outwardly insecure until now. I feel like I need more reassurance. Skyping with my 7-year-old cousin and needing him to tell me I don’t look strange is a regular occurrence these days. My favorite part is that his response this last time was that I didn’t look weird but I looked like I needed a shower.

So when does this new-found self-esteem kick in? At what point to I stop feeling uncomfortable in my own skin? Will I ever feel comfortable in my own skin? These are the questions I’m struggling with these days. I’m sure that part of me thought that I would be like these weight lost poster children who lose a fuck-ton of weight and then are miraculously these happy, shiny people who like to run 5k’s. That’s not me. I still feel like I’m 300+ lbs. My mind hasn’t caught up with my body yet.

I have a love hate relationship with this place. It really is the city of sin, and it took all of my willpower not to give in a few weekends ago. By fluke I managed to have a three day weekend and decided to tag along with my friend Nhi and her friend Kerri on a weekend trip to Vegas. This was my first real trip post-op, and it was a lot more difficult than I had anticipated.

First of all, I am a much cheaper drunk than I ever remember being. Our first stop on our Vegas adventure was a favourite restaurant of ours, http://www.fireflylv.com/ which is an amazing tapas place that serves the most amazing bacon wrapped dates filled with goats cheese and walnuts, topped in a balsamic reduction. In a word, it’s orgasmic. We get there, and between the three of us ordered 2 pitchers of sangria. Typically I can down an entire pitcher of the stuff by myself, but this was my first really attempt at getting drunk since the surgery. Half of a glass in and I was a mess, drunk texting, drunk dialing, and just being ridiculous in general. We ended up on Fremont Street that night, and a good time, encountered a place called “The D”….. I know all about the D.

The rest of the trip was filled with drunken Margaritaville antics and walking up and down the strip. Oh and on the day I flew home I turned 27 and had a bit of a mental breakdown about it. But aside from that I had a good time, ate like crap, walked a ton and still managed to lose 2 pounds over the course of that weekend. No complaints.

The challenges of this short but sweet trip were that I tried so hard to eat on this trip like I normally would, but I just couldn’t do it. We went to the Cheesecake Factory, I ordered a burger and ate a quarter of it, felt uncomfortably full for a solid hour or two, and threw out the left overs because I couldn’t be bothered to carry them around with me all day. Then I went to the candy store called Sugar and bought tons of salt water taffy, which I’m still working on. It’s a struggle to try to enjoy everything with all of the restrictions. In the end, it’s a waste of money for me to try to eat like a normal person, so being as cheap as I am, I’m not going to even bother trying.